PrepUS History
Unit 7 - Changing America
The Great Depression
The Stock Market Soars
When the stock market has a long period of rising stock prices it is called a bull market. The bull
market of the 1920s convinced many to invest in stocks. By 1929, approximately 10 percent of
American households owned stocks.
Before the late 1920s, stock prices generally reflected their true values. In the late 1920s,
however, many investors failed to consider a company’s earnings and profits. Buyers engaged in
speculation, or betting the market would continue to climb, thus enabling them to sell stock and
make money quickly.
Many investors bought stocks on margin, making only a small cash down payment (as low as 10
percent of the price). With $1,000, an investor could buy a sum of $10,000 worth of stock. The
remaining $9,000 came as an interest-bearing loan from the stockbroker. Quick profits were
possible if stock prices kept rising, but problems came when prices began to fall. To protect a
loan, a broker could issue a margin call, demanding the investor repay the loan at once.
The Stock Market Crash
The bull market lasted only as long as investors continued putting new money into it. In
September 1929, the market peaked. Prices then began an uneven downward slide. As investors
decided the boom was over, they sold more stock, causing prices to decline even further.
On Monday, October 21, 1929, the comedian Groucho Marx was awakened by a telephone call
from his broker. “You’d better get down here with some cash to cover your margin,” the broker
said. The stock market had plunged. The dazed comedian had to pay back the money he had
borrowed to buy stocks, which were now selling for far less than he had paid for them. Other
brokers made similar margin calls. Customers put stocks up for sale at a frenzied pace, driving
the market into a tailspin.
On October 24, a day that came to be called Black Thursday, the market plummeted further.
Marx was wiped out. His earnings from plays and films were gone, and he was deeply in debt.
His son recalled his visit to the brokerage firm, as Groucho spotted his broker:
“He was sitting in front of the now-stilled ticker-tape machine, with his head buried in his hands. Ticker tape
was strewn around him on the floor, and the place . . . looked as if it hadn’t been swept out in a week.
[Groucho] tapped [him] on the shoulder and said, ‘Aren’t you the fellow who said nothing could go wrong—
that we were in a world market?’ 'I guess I made a mistake,’ said Mr. Green. ‘No, I’m the one who made a
mistake,’ said [Groucho]. ‘I listened to you.’”
~ from
Life with Groucho, 1954 ~
The following week, on October 29, a day that was later dubbed Black Tuesday, prices took the
steepest dive yet. That day, more than 16 million shares of stock were sold, and the value of the
industrial index (a measure of the value of leading industrial companies) dropped by 10 percent.
By mid-November, the market price of stocks had dropped by more than one-third. Some $30
billion was lost, a sum roughly equal to the total wages Americans earned in 1929. Although the
stock market crash was not the major cause of the Depression, it undermined the economy’s
ability to overcome other weaknesses.
Banks Begin to Close
The market crash weakened the nation’s banks in two ways. First, by 1929, banks had lent
billions to stock speculators. Second, many banks had invested depositors’ money in the stock
market, hoping for high returns. When stock values collapsed, banks lost money on their
investments, and speculators defaulted on their loans. Having suffered serious losses, many
banks cut back drastically on loans. With less credit available, consumers and businesses were
not able to borrow as much money, sending the economy into a recession.
Some banks could not absorb the losses they suffered and had to close. The government did not
insure bank deposits, so if a bank failed, customers, including even those who did not invest in
the stock market, lost their savings. As a growing number of banks closed in 1929 and 1930, a
severe crisis of confidence in the banking system further destabilized the economy.
News of bank failures worried Americans. Some depositors made runs on banks, thus causing
the banks to fail. A bank run takes place when many depositors decide to withdraw their money
at the same time, usually out of fear that the bank will collapse. Most banks make a profit by
lending money received from depositors and collecting interest on the loans. The bank keeps
only a fraction of depositors’ money in reserve. Usually, that reserve is enough to meet the
bank’s needs. If too many people withdraw their money, however, the bank will collapse. By
1932, about one in four banks in the United States had gone out of business.
The Roots of the Great Depression
The stock market crash played a major role in putting the economy into a recession. Yet the
crash would not have led to a long-lasting depression if other forces had not been at work. The
roots of the Great Depression were deeply entangled in the economy of the 1920s.
The Uneven Distribution of Income
Overproduction was a factor leading to the onset of the Great Depression. More efficient
machinery increased the production capacity of factories and farms. Most Americans did not
earn enough to buy up the goods they helped produce. Manufacturing output per person-hour
rose 32 percent, but the average worker’s wage increased only 8 percent. In 1929 the top 5
percent of all American households earned 30 percent of the nation’s income. In contrast, about
two-thirds of families earned less than $2,500 a year, leaving them with little disposable income.
Farmers, in particular, did not share in the prosperity of the 1920s, as many had gone into debt to
buy land or equipment during World War I, when demand for their products was high. When
prices fell, they tried to produce even more to pay their debts, taxes, and living expenses. Prices
dropped so low that many farmers went bankrupt and lost their farms.
During the 1920s, many Americans had purchased high-cost items, such as refrigerators and
cars, on the installment plan. Purchasers could make small down payments and pay the
remainder of the item’s price in monthly installments. Paying off such debts eventually forced
some buyers to stop making new purchases. Because of the decrease in demand for their
products, manufacturers in turn cut production and laid off employees.
The slowdown in retail sales echoed throughout the economy. When radio sales slumped, for
example, orders for copper wire, wood cabinets, and glass radio tubes slowed. Montana copper
miners, Minnesota lumberjacks, and Ohio glassworkers lost jobs. Jobless workers cut purchases,
further reducing sales. This put even more Americans out of work. Unemployment insurance
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was nonexistent. Many families had little or no savings. Lost jobs often meant dire
circumstances. In 1930 alone, about 26,000 businesses failed.
The Loss of Export Sales
Many jobs might have been saved if American manufacturers had sold more goods abroad. As
the bull market of the 1920s sped up, however, U.S. banks made loans to speculators rather than
loans to foreign companies. Loans from U.S. banks had helped European nations make war
reparations and pay down war debts. They had also secured foreign markets for U.S. exports.
Without these loans from U.S. banks, foreign companies purchased fewer American products.
Life During the Great Depression
Large numbers of people lost their jobs and homes during the Depression. To help people escape
their troubles, popular entertainment offered humorous and optimistic movies and radio
programs. Novelists and photographers created more realistic portrayals of American life.
The Depression Worsens
The Depression grew steadily worse. In 1930, across the nation, 1,352 banks suspended
operations, more than twice the number of bank failures in 1929. In 1932 alone, some 30,000
companies went out of business. By 1933, roughly one-fourth of the workforce was unemployed.
Struggling to Get By
The jobless often went hungry. When possible, they stood in breadlines for free food or lined up
outside soup kitchens set up by private groups. People who could not pay their rent or mortgage
lost their homes. Some, paralyzed by fear and humiliation, did not move and were evicted. Court
officers ejected them and their belongings. Throughout the country, newly homeless people put
up shacks on unused or public lands. They built shantytowns, which they called Hoovervilles
after the president they blamed for their plight.
In search of work or a better life, many homeless, unemployed Americans began walking,
hitchhiking, or, most often, “riding the rails” across the country. These wanderers, called hoboes,
would sneak past railroad police to slip into open boxcars on freight trains. Hundreds of
thousands of people, mostly boys and young men, wandered from place to place in this way.
The Depression also caused many immigrants to return to their native countries. In some cases,
this repatriation was voluntary as jobs became scarce. In other cases, repatriation was forced.
The federal government launched repatriation drives to send poor immigrants back to their home
countries. It also stepped up efforts to deport immigrants who had violated the law. In the
Southwest, federal officials rounded up Mexicans (often without regard to their citizenship
status) and forcibly returned them to Mexico.
The Dust Bowl
When crop prices dropped in the 1920s, farmers tried to make up the difference by planting more
wheat. Then, a terrible drought struck the Great Plains, leaving the fields bare. The soil dried to
dust. A vast “Dust Bowl” stretched from the Dakotas to Texas.
Winds blew the arid earth aloft, blackening the sky for hundreds of miles. Dust buried crops and
livestock. Humans and animals caught outdoors sometimes died of suffocation when the dust
filled their lungs. During most of the 1930s, an average of 50 dust storms a year hit the Plains.
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Some Great Plains farmers managed to hold on to their land, but others were not as lucky. If their
land was mortgaged, they had to turn the property over to the banks. Then, nearly penniless,
many families headed west, hoping for a better life in California. Because many migrants were
from Oklahoma, they became known as “Okies.” In California, their struggles continued:
“[They have] one-room shacks usually about 10 by 12 feet, have no rug, no water, no bed. In one corner
there is a little iron wood stove. Water must be carried from the faucet at the end of the street.”
~ John Steinbeck, from The Harvest Gypsies, 1936 ~
Identify/Define
1.
What happened on Black Tuesday?
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2.
What happened on Black Thursday?
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3.
What was a breadline?
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4.
What were shantytowns?
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5.
What was a hobo?
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6.
What caused the Dust Bowl?
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7.
What were “Okies?”
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Explain
8.
What economic choices caused the economy to become unstable in the late 1920s?
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9.
How did the stock market crash trigger a chain of events that led to the Depression?
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10.
What were the underlying conditions that led to the collapse of the U.S. economy?
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